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that sign, the vernal equinox was passing through the sign of Taurus. Now, the earliest year we read of in Babylonia is that which opened with the vernal equinox in the sign of the "directing bull." This was the same year or cycle, sign for sign, as the Egyptian sacred year with the solstice in Leo, but with a different point of commencement, the Egyptian starting from the solstice; or rather from what had ever been the fixed point of the inundation; the Babylonian from the vernal equinox. Khebt, the goddess of the Great Bear, was said to "preside over the birth of the Sun." In the stellar mythos she had presided over the birth of Horus in the inundation. But when solar time was established the child was solar too, and the sun-god Horus Har-Makhu superseded Sebek of the inundation. His place of birth was shifted to the vernal equinox, and the birth itself was thenceforth timed no longer to the inundation. Horus, the Child or Messu of the inundation, on his papyrus, was now brought forth by Hathor, with Sothis as the Star of Annunciation. The birth took place in "Sothis," the birthday being determined by the heliacal rising of the star, as well as by the Tail of Ursa Major. Khebt, or Apt, the Old First Mother, still presided, as great correlator over all, as if she were the midwife or meskhenat in attendance at the birth when Hathor had become the mother. The goddess Hathor was termed the mistress of the beginning of the year in relation to the rising of Sothis; and Hathor was a form of the hippopotamus-headed mother of the beginnings in the Great Bear, with the milch-cow substituted for the water-cow; both being types of the wetnurse and giver of the precious liquid of life. And when the celestial figures of the astral Mythology were constellated in the northern heaven the ancient. Genetrix had been portrayed already in the three characters of mother-earth, the mother of water, and the mother of breath. But before we have done with the Great Bear Constellation in the northern heaven we have to point out a primitive symbol of her who was figured as the mother of beginnings by nature and by name.

A magical implement commonly called the "bull-roarer " is found in divers parts of the world. It is one of the simplest things that ever acquired a primitive sacredness from being made use of as a means of invocation in the religious mysteries and totemic ceremonies of the past; an implement that is dying out in England to-day as a toy now called the "fun of the fair." The Arunta Churinga shows that the "whirler," "roarer" or thun-thunie, originally represented the female. Hence it has the phallic emblem of the vulva figured on it as a device in the language of signs. (N. T. P. 150.) Others of the churinga are womb-shaped. The ornament of others also indicates the human birthplace. Moreover, life is portrayed in the act of issuing from the wood, as tree-frogs issued from the tree. Enough to show the primitive nature of the symbol. It is used in the mysteries as a means of calling the initiates who are about to be made into men. The special dance of the nude young women, their exhibition of the embellished organ and peculiar appeal to the youngsters, demonstrates that the call is made by female nature at the time for that fulfilment of the male which was the object of the ceremony. These women were making the visible call that was audible in the sound of the bullroarer. In the course of time the implements had changed hands as

the mysteries became more and more masculine and the women were excluded from the ceremonies. But the Kurnai have two kinds of "Roarer," one of which represents the inspiring spirit as female; this was primary. At first the "whirler" used in the mysteries to call the initiates for young-man-making was the voice of the female calling on the male, to become a man ; to be brave in fulfilling the laws of Tabu and rules of personal conduct; to be true to the brotherhood, and "not to eat the forbidden food." The forms of the magical instrument differ, but all are used for whirling round to make the call. Now Khebt, the Old First Mother in Egyptian mythology, who was constellated in the Great Bear, is portrayed with the "bull-roarer" held in front of her womb. The name of the Egyptian instrument is "menait," which literally signifies the whirler, from men to rotate, to whirl round. Thus the symbol of the whirling round can be traced to the mother of the revolutions as a figure in the astronomical mythology of Egypt. The Great Bear goddess was portrayed in this position as the "mother of the revolutions" and the maker of motion in a circle. Hers was the primary power that drew or turned, hurled or whirled the starry system round about the pole, as the mighty hippopotamus in the celestial waters. Her names of Rerit and Menait both indicate the character of rotator, which is signified by the menait in her hands. The goddess of the Great Bear (hippopotamus) was adored at Ombos as the "living word." She is configurated in the planisphere with huge jaws wide open in the act of uttering the word, or of roaring. The Egyptian wisdom implies that the menait held in front of the First Mother signified the female emblem, the original instrument of magical power. With the roar of Rerit the water-cow called to her young bulls, and her roar would be imitated by the bull-roarer, menait or turndun, in calling them, and as the voice of the female calling on the males it was continued in the ceremony of young-man-making, in the totemic mysteries. Thus we find the goddess Apt, or Khebt the roarer, as a hippopotamus, the Great Bear," rurring" or whirling round, with the "bull-roarer" as her sign and symbol, at the centre of the northern heaven (see fig., p. 124, also p. 311).

There is a remarkable survival of what may be tentatively termed the cult of the Great Bear amongst the Mandaites or Sabeans of Mesopotomia, who are worshippers of the "living word." In the performance of their worship the eyes are fixed upon the pointers of the Great Bear. They celebrate a kind of feast of tabernacles annually, for which they erect a tabernacle called the Mishkena or Meskhen. Lastly, the primordial star-cult of the Great Bear is also British. In the ancient Welsh mythology the Great Mother Arth is the goddess of the Great Bear, and Arthur Horus is her solar son who makes his celestial voyage with the seven in the ark.

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Hitherto Egyptologists have been inclined to regard the female hippopotamus (our Great Bear) and the "haunch" as one and the same constellation. This premature guess is erroneous. They were both signs of the Great Mother, but in two separate constellations which represented two different characters. In the Egyptian planisphere, as at Denderah, the female hippopotamus answers to our Great Bear, whereas the sign of the "haunch" is on the far side of the Lesser Bear, in the position of Cassiopoea, the lady in the chair.

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we take the tail-star of the Bear as guide, the constellation Cassiopoea is almost exactly opposite. Thus when the tail of the bear is pointing north in winter, Cassiopoea is at its southern elongation. These are two different types of the Great Mother, who was Apt the EarthMother in one character, as the water-cow, and Nut the Mother Heaven in the other, as the milch-cow. Also in the illustration on a Theban tomb the constellation of the "haunch" is widely distinct from the hippopotamus. And it is this constellation that is distinguished by name. as the "meskhen" with the hieroglyphics written on it which read, ŇO Mes-khe-n, the womb as place or chamber of birth depicted in the constellation of the haunch" or "thigh." It is noticeable that the head of the milchcow is portrayed upon the "haunch." This distinguishes the one cow from the other, the milch-cow of Nut from the water-cow of Khebt or Apt, or our Great Bear. It also shows that the "thigh" or "haunch" belonged to the milch-cow, and represented the same celestial “seat” and place of origin as the later lady in the chair. But, whether it is figured as the cow or Meskhen, the "thigh," "haunch," or leg of the cow, it signified the birthplace of the celestial waters in the mythos, and the place of re-birth for souls in the heaven of eternity. Then follows the tampering and retouching process of the Euphrateans, Greeks, or other modern claimants to the ancient wisdom. The place of the "seat" or "thigh" was given to a woman sitting in a chair, and the lady of the chair usurps the throne of Isis with her seat and the pre-anthropomorphic type that was constellated ages on ages earlier in Egypt as the cow of Nut or heaven. The "thigh" in signlanguage is a type of birth and thence of the birthplace, when the birth was water, as we find it constellated in the northern heaven. The star "Phact" (in Arabic, the thigh) shows us that this birthplace had been constellated in the southern hemisphere as the sign of Tekhi the giver of water in the inundation. Thus the "thigh" was figured both in the south and in the north to signify the birthplace and the birth of water. In the south the water was the river Nile, and in the north it is the river of the Milky Way. These are the two waters of earth and heaven proceeding from the cow that was the water-cow of Apt or Tekhi in the earth, and the milch-cow of Nut in heaven. As before said, one of the two great lakes at the celestial pole is the Lake of the "Thigh" or "Haunch," which is mentioned by name in the Ritual (ch. 149). It is also called the Thigh of Khar-aba, at the head of the canal, or Milky Way. The Lake of the Thigh was the birthplace of the waters above, where the milch-cow or her "haunch was a constellated figure of source whence flowed the great white river of the Via Lactea. The leg (thigh, seat, womb, or haunch) of Nut, the celestial cow, once stood where the lady in the chair is seated now. Nut, or the milch-cow, was the bringer to re-birth in this region of the pole. The Seven Powers brought to their re-birth in Seven Great Spirits were constellated as her children in the Lesser Bear, as seven stars that never set, but were fixtures for eternity. The two constellations of the hippopotamus and the "haunch," or Meskhen, are also found in the rectangular zodiac that was carved upon the ceiling of the Great Temple at Denderah.

As may be observed, the two figures of the hippopotamus and the "haunch" (or milch-cow) are yoked together by a chain, one end of which is held by Apt, and the other is made fast to the "haunch" or cow. This is in the position of the pole which was the yoke or bond of heaven, and which was known in Babylonia as "the yoke of the enclosure." The chain shows that the Great Bear was made fast to the pole for security in its swing round. It also shows that the pole was once imaged either in or by the constellation of the "haunch," the seat, or milch-cow in that region. The leg or thigh was an Egyptian figure of the pole, as we find it in "the leg of Ptah," a constellation

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which has been identified with the lady of the seat. Hence, "above the leg" is equivalent to "over the pole" (Ritual, ch. 7, 74, and 98, Renouf).

Heaven as a source of liquid life that dropped in dew and rain upon the earth was likened to a cow, or, in sign-language, was the cow. Apt is the cow of earth and Nut the cow of heaven. Apparently the cow of heaven, or Nut, supplied the earliest foundation for the pole which, as the figure of the cow dislimned, was represented by the leg of Nut (otherwise called the "thigh," the "haunch" or "seat ") as the central figure of support in heaven. The cow being primary, it follows that the "leg of Nut" was an earlier image of the pole than the "leg of Ptah," the staff of Anup, or the backbone of Osiris-which were also figures of fixity whether at or as the pole of Heaven. The leg or haunch of the cow was then left standing in the midst of the Milky Way. The speaker in the Ritual thus addresses it, "Oh, thou leg in the northern sky, and in that most conspicuous but inaccessible stream," which is elsewhere termed the canal. In the pyramid texts it is called "the leg (Uarit) of the Akhemu-Seku," the stars that never set-the eternals, as a type of stability (Pepi I, 411). Cassiopoea, the lady in the chair, also sits in the midst of the Milky Way. Thus the "seat" remains, if only as a chair; the white river flows, with nothing to account for it; and the lake of milk, the cow, the haunch, thigh or leg of Nut are all dislimned or have passed away.

The Great Bear made her circuit on the outside of the neversetting stars, whereas the "leg" or "haunch" was a constellation in the circle of perpetual apparition. It never set below the horizon, nor

did any of its stars go down through all the period of the long great year. Thus the bit of foothold in the watery vast of space was figured as the "seat," the Meskhen, womb, or re-birth-place in the heaven of eternity. The deceased, when speaking of his going forth from the tomb, identifies this constellation with the place of re-birth above, saying, "I shall shine above the haunch' as I come forth in heaven" (Rit., ch. 74). That is, at the point where the "leg" was constellated to show the upward way upon the starry map to him who lay looking heavenward "with a corpse-like face." Deceased in Amenta pleads for his re-birth above betwixt the thighs of the divine. cow as a type of heaven (Rit., ch. 148). The Old Great Mother, as the hippopotamus, we repeat, was not within the circle of the neversetting stars, in the circumpolar Paradise. It was the milch-cow Hesit, not the water-cow, that "gave the white liquor which the glorified ones love"; the milk that flowed from the cow, whether she was divinized as Nut, or Mehurit the Heaven, or Hathor, or Isis the cow-headed goddesses. The cow Hesit was designated "the Divine Mother and fair nurse as giver of the liquid of life when this was. represented in heaven by the milk of the celestial cow.

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This identification of the "thigh" as a totally different constellation from the Greater Bear will alter the reading of certain inscriptions. in which the "thigh" and "Bear" have been mixed up together. For example, when the alignment was made for the Temple of Hathor to be rebuilt at Denderah, in the time of Augustus, the King tells us that he oriented the corners and established the temple as it took place before," whilst looking to the sky and directing his gaze to the Ak of the "thigh" constellation. Here the "Ak" denotes a central point, the axis or middle of the starry group. Also when the temple at Edfu was refounded (about 257-37 B.C.) the King who "stretches the measuring-cord" and lays the foundation-stone is represented as saying, that when doing this his eye was fixed upon. the Meskhet or Meskhen, which has been supposed to be in the Great Bear. This also was in the constellation of the "haunch," as may be seen by the fragment from a Theban tomb (p. 289) where the "haunch" is labelled the "Meskhen" or chamber of birth which the constellation indicated; the birth chamber of the cow above, that was copied in the temple of the cow-goddess below (Lockyer, The Dawn of Astronomy, p. 172).

The cow of heaven as the milch-cow was portrayed standing or resting on the summit of the mount which was connected with the sky," as portrayed in the monuments. This, in the Persian rendering, was the cow upon the summit of Mount Alborz. In the Norse mythology it is the cow Audhumla. As the Prose Edda describes it, "immediately after the gelid vapours had been resolved into drops, there was formed out of them the cow named Audhumla. Four streams of milk ran from her teats, and thus she fed Ymir" (Prose Edda 6), just as the cow of heaven suckled Horus. Heaven, as the cow, is called the spouse upon the mountain. She is the mother of the solar bull, and, as goddess, is described as suckling her child Horus, and as having "drooping dugs" (Renouf, B. of D., ch. 62, note 1). The Milky Way was pictured as the celestial water, now called milk, that flowed from the cow of heaven couched upon the

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